WIKIPEDIA

Freedom Writers is a 2007 drama film starring Hilary Swank, Scott Glenn, Imelda
Staunton and Patrick Dempsey.
It is based on the book The Freedom Writers Diary by teacher Erin Gruwell who wrote
the story based on Woodrow Wilson Classical High School in Eastside, Long
Beach,California. The title is a play on the term "Freedom Riders", referring to the
multiracialcivil rights activists who tested the U.S. Supreme Court decision ordering
thedesegregation of interstate buses in 1961.
The idea for the film came from journalist Tracey Durning, who made a documentary
about Erin Gruwell for the ABC News program Primetime Live. Durning served as coexecutive producer of the film.

The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to
Change Themselves and the World Around Them is a non-fiction 1999 book written
by The Freedom Writers, a group of students from Woodrow Wilson High
School in Long Beach, California, and their teacher Erin Gruwell. It is the basis of
the 2007 movie Freedom Writers, starring Hilary Swank. The Freedom Writers Diary
was made up of journals that Erin Gruwell told her students to write in about the
troubles of their past, present and future. The Freedom Writers name pays homage to
the name of the 1960s civil rights group Freedom Riders.
Gruwell received the inspiration to teach them using the techniques described in the
book after intercepting a racist drawing from one of her students. When she compared
the drawings to Nazi propaganda techniques, she drew blank stares because none of
them had heard of the Jewish Holocaust. As a result, she assigned them to read and
write about The Diary of Anne Frank and Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo.[1]
The Freedom Writers Foundation continued with exercises and philosophies similar to
those used in the original class, and tracks the progress of the original and continuing
classes.

Plot Summary
As an idealistic twenty-three-year-old English teacher at Wilson High School in Long
Beach, California, Erin Gruwell confronted a room of unteachable, at-risk students.
One day she intercepted a note with an ugly racial caricature, and angrily declared that
this was precisely the sort of thing that led to the Jewish Holocaustonly to be met by
uncomprehending looks. So she and her students, using the treasured books Anne
Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and Zlatas Diary: A Childs Life in Sarajevo as their
guides, undertook a life-changing, eye-opening, spirit-raising odyssey against
intolerance and misunderstanding. They learned to see the parallels in these books to
their own lives, recording their thoughts and feelings in diaries and dubbing themselves
the Freedom Writers in homage to the civil rights activists The Freedom Riders.
With funds raised by a Read-a-thon for Tolerance, they arranged for Miep Gies, the
Dutch woman who sheltered the Frank family, to visit them in California, where she
declared that Erin Gruwells students were the real heroes. Their efforts have paid off
spectacularly, both in terms of recognitionappearances on Prime Time Live and All
Things Considered, coverage in People magazine, a meeting with U.S. Secretary of
Education Richard Rileyand educationally. All 150 Freedom Writers have graduated
from high school and many are now attending college.

Banning of the book in schools

On March 11, 2008, an English teacher at Perry Meridian High School in Indianapolis,
Indiana, Connie Heerman, was suspended for a year and a half without pay for using
the Freedom Writers Diary in her classroom against the wishes of the school board.[2]
[3]
Administrators objected to racial slurs and sexual content in portions of the book.
[4]
Heerman had received permission the previous year to attend a workshop based on
the books and obtained permission slips from the parents involved. The school board
contends that Heermen did not properly follow the rules to receive permission to use
the book.[5] Erin Gruwell commented on the controversy, saying, "The best way to get a
teenager to read a book is to ban it. When someone who is a daunting authority figure
says, 'Give us your book', I think these students [thought], 'There must be something
powerful in these words'. "[4]

Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into
the segregated southern United States in 1961 and following years to challenge the
non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Irene Morgan v.
Commonwealth of Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960),[1] which ruled that
segregated public buses were unconstitutional.[2] The Southern states had ignored the
rulings and the federal government did nothing to enforce them. The first Freedom Ride
left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961,[3] and was scheduled to arrive in New
Orleans on May 17.[4]
Boynton outlawed racial segregation in the restaurants and waiting rooms in terminals
serving buses that crossed state lines. Five years prior to the Boynton ruling,
the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) had issued a ruling in Sarah Keys v.
Carolina Coach Company (1955) that had explicitly denounced the Plessy v.
Ferguson (1896) doctrine of separate but equal in interstate bus travel. The ICC failed
to enforce its ruling, and Jim Crow travel laws remained in force throughout the South.
The Freedom Riders challenged this status quo by riding interstate buses in the South
in mixed racial groups to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation in
seating. The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the
credibility of the American Civil Rights Movement. They called national attention to the
disregard for the federal law and the local violence used to enforce segregation in the
southern United States. Police arrested riders for trespassing, unlawful assembly, and
violating state and local Jim Crow laws, along with other alleged offenses, but they
often first let white mobs attack them without intervention.
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sponsored most of the subsequent Freedom
Rides, but some were also organized by theStudent Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC). The Freedom Rides followed dramatic sit-ins against
segregated lunch counters, conducted by students and youth throughout the South,
and boycotts of retail establishments that maintained segregated facilities, beginning in
1960.
The Supreme Court's decision in Boynton supported the right of interstate travelers to
disregard local segregation ordinances. Southern local and state police considered the
actions of the Freedom Riders as criminal and arrested them in some locations. In
some localities, such as Birmingham, Alabama, the police cooperated with Ku Klux
Klan chapters and other whites opposing the actions and allowed mobs to attack the
riders.